Every Body Looking

by Candice Iloh

when we didn’t have the money to travel overseas learned rhythms to tell stories learned steps used to ground us began learning how to find home later on in my own skin

When you get too big to be carried when you start wanting things beyond food or a place to sleep when you start needing a way to make sense of everything happening when you start growing further away from what used to be home you go looking for somewhere that lets you be what’s inside your head you go find a way to get back to your own history lesson to your own way of being alive

Words are powerful unless they’re not biblical unless they’re not written by men unless they’re unlike Jesus’s spit itself why can’t I pray outside of his name? why is my name not enough?

There are things they tell you get easier with time that one day you’ll grow up and be able to take it all they say this is what you have to do to be an adult this is what you have to do to survive you will not own your body you will not own your things you will not own your feelings you belong to the world to them to Him

Dad claimed to know all about how boys were supposed to treat me if he doesn’t treat you better than I treat you he isn’t good enough but almost always kept good enough to himself kept his little girl close kept his little girl blind kept his little girl wanting to know what better was

I didn’t know there were other teams wondering how one gets on the other team without knowing how to play what’s wrong with a girl wanting to be comfortable what’s wrong with keeping what I had to myself aren’t us girls all on the same team? but it seemed like everyone knew how to play this game everyone but me

Adults never think that we are listening that us kids can hear the things they say to each other about us the things they say to us about each other they must think we see everything as play

cause women are women and men are men and they shouldn’t be out here tryna do what we do

they warned me of changing my mind and I knew nothing but these buildings but these classes but these rules where I’d come only as a girl with instructions and big eyes but now I know something about myself and where my heart is leading me so how hard can dreaming really be